insouciance

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 30, 2025 is: insouciance • \in-SOO-see-unss\  • noun Insouciance is a formal word that refers to a feeling of carefree unconcern. It can also be understood as a word for the relaxed and calm state of a person who is not worried about anything. // The young actor charmed interviewers with his easy smile and devil-may-care insouciance. See the entry > Examples: “Gladiator II is OK when Denzel’s off-screen, but sensational when he’s on it. ... What makes the performance great is its insouciance; it’s both precise and feather-light. And it’s what a great actor can do when he’s set free to have fun, to laugh at himself a little bit. ... Denzel’s Macrinus is gravitas and comic relief in one package.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 22 Nov. 2024 Did you know? If you were alive and of whistling age in the late 1980s or early 1990s, chances are you whistled (and snapped your fingers, and tapped your toes) to a little ditty called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin, an a cappella reggae-jazz-pop tune that took the charts by surprise and by storm. An ode to cheerful insouciance if ever there was one, its lyrics are entirely concerned with being entirely unconcerned, remaining trouble-free in the face of life’s various stressors and calamities. Such carefree nonchalance is at the heart of insouciance, which arrived in English (along with the adjective insouciant), from French, in the 1800s. The French word comes from a combining of the negative prefix in- with the verb soucier, meaning “to trouble or disturb.” The easiness and breeziness of insouciance isn’t always considered beautiful, however. Insouciance may also be used when someone’s lack of concern for serious matters is seen as more careless than carefree.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 29, 2025 is: furtive • \FER-tiv\  • adjective Furtive describes something that is done in a quiet and secret way to avoid being noticed. It can also mean "expressive of stealth" or "sly" (as in "a furtive look"), or "obtained underhandedly" (as in "furtive gains"). // We exchanged furtive smiles across the table, carefully not to attract the teacher's attention. See the entry > Examples: "Like cardinals, Carolina wrens have slowly and gradually immigrated into New Brunswick and other areas of the Maritimes…. So if we look at this little bird, what do we see? First, it 'looks' like a wren, meaning it's small with a cocked-up tail and a fairly long beak. It would also have a rather perky behaviour and furtive movements. Its coloration is quite striking, being a rich earthy brown above and deep caramel below, and another distinctive feature is a prominent white line over each eye." — Jim Wilson, The Daily Gleaner (New Brunswick, Canada), 27 Mar. 2025 Did you know? You can’t steal someone’s heart without capturing their attention, nor can you steal someone’s thunder without hijacking their audience’s attention. But attention is something most thieves would rather avoid; whether stealing a glance or a diamond, one must be furtive or risk getting caught in the act. When first used in written English in the early 1600s, furtive meant "done by stealth." It later adopted the less common meaning "stolen" or "obtained underhandedly." Whichever meaning you choose, the word has a fittingly elusive ancestry, either stepping into English via the French furtif or coming directly from that word's ancestor, the Latin furtivus, itself a descendent of fur, meaning "thief."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 28, 2025 is: alacrity • \uh-LAK-ruh-tee\  • noun Alacrity refers to a quick and cheerful readiness to do something. // She accepted the invitation to go on the trip with an alacrity that surprised her parents, who had assumed she wouldn’t be interested. See the entry > Examples: “Antipater, about to mount his horse, saw Pollio and Sameas so close to him that the sleeve of Sameas almost touched his own in the crush. … Antipater had graciously invited the two to view his new grandson and sip a cup of wine cooled by snow brought from Mount Hermon. The two accepted with alacrity.” — Zora Neale Hurston, The Life of Herod the Great, 2025 Did you know? “I have not that alacrity of spirit / Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have,” says William Shakespeare’s King Richard III in the play that bears his name. Alas and alack, Richard! Alacrity comes from the Latin word alacer, meaning “lively” or “eager,” and suggests physical quickness coupled with eagerness or enthusiasm. Thus, a spirit that lacks alacrity—like Richard III’s—is in the doldrums, in need of a little (to use a much less formal word than alacrity) get-up-and-go.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 27, 2025 is: decimate • \DESS-uh-mayt\  • verb Decimate can mean both “to destroy a large number of (plants, animals, people, etc.)” or “to severely damage or destroy a large part of (something).” // The bay’s lobsters have been decimated by disease. // Budget cuts have decimated public services throughout the state. See the entry > Examples: “The deer—and there is an abundance of those animals this year—got into my beans and within a few nights they had all but decimated my crop. Tracks showed that at least half a dozen whitetails were invading the garden every night.” — Donnie Johnston, The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia), 6 Aug. 2024 Did you know? Decimate is a word that often raises hackles, at least those belonging to a small but committed group of logophiles who feel that it is commonly misused. The issue that they have with the decline and fall of the word decimate is that once upon a time in ancient Rome it had a very singular meaning: “to select by lot and kill every tenth man of a military unit.” However, many words in English descended from Latin have changed and/or expanded their meanings in their travels. For example, we no longer think of sinister as meaning “on the left side,” and delicious can describe things both tasty and delightful. Was the “to kill every tenth man” meaning the original use of decimate in English? Yes, but not by much. It took only a few decades for decimate to acquire its broader, familiar meaning of “to severely damage or destroy,” which has been employed steadily since the 17th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 26, 2025 is: nonchalant • \nahn-shuh-LAHNT\  • adjective Someone described as nonchalant is relaxed and calm, either because they do not care about something or because they are not worried about something. Nonchalant can also be used to describe something, such as demeanor or behavior, that expresses such relaxed, calm unconcern. // The team showed a somewhat nonchalant attitude at the beginning of the season, but they became more serious once the championship was within reach. See the entry > Examples: "He is largely unaffected by the fame and fortune and all the talk of greatness tends to be greeted with a nonchalant shrug." — The Evening Times (Glasgow, Scotland), 19 Mar. 2024 Did you know? Since nonchalant ultimately comes from words meaning "not" and "be warm," it's no surprise that the word is all about keeping one's cool. Nonchalant’s Old French ancestor is the verb nonchaloir, meaning "to disregard," which combines non-, meaning "not," with chaloir, meaning "to concern." Chaloir in turn traces back to the Latin calēre, meaning "to be warm" (calēre is also the forerunner of the heat-related English word calorie). You might assume that the prefix non- implies the existence of an antonymous chalant, but no such word has developed in English. It’s no big deal though—if you want a word that means the opposite of nonchalant, both concerned and interested can do the job.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 25, 2025 is: travail • \truh-VAIL\  • noun Travail is a formal word, usually used in plural, that refers to a difficult experience or situation. // The book describes the political travails of the governor during her first year in office. See the entry > Examples: "Written by Samy Burch, the film [Coyote vs. Acme] follows the travails of the desert denizen who is tired of being slammed with Acme products as he tries to outsmart the Roadrunner. Coyote finally decides to hire a lawyer to take the Acme Corp. to court for product liability, such as faulty rocket skates and defective aerial bombs." — Meg James, The Los Angeles Times, 20 Mar. 2025 Did you know? Travail traces back to trepalium, a Late Latin word for an instrument of torture. We don't know exactly what a trepalium looked like, but the word's history gives us an idea. Trepalium comes from the Latin adjective tripalis, which means "having three stakes" (from tri-, meaning "three," and palus, meaning "stake"). Trepalium eventually led to the Anglo-French verb travailler, meaning "to torment" but also, more mildly, "to trouble" and "to journey." The Anglo-French noun travail was borrowed into English in the 13th century, along with another descendant of travailler, travel.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 24, 2025 is: ostensible • \ah-STEN-suh-bul\  • adjective Ostensible is used to describe something that seems or is said to be true or real, but is possibly not true or real. In other words, it is plausible rather than demonstrably true or real. // The ostensible purpose of a filibuster is to extend debate, but in reality it is used to delay or prevent action. See the entry > Examples: “No drums, no bass, no conventional song structures: Hosianna Mantra was a 40-minute contemplation of the cosmos and cosmic love, couched in words and sounds that explicitly linked it to humanity’s grandest and most consistent way of considering meaning, religion. The ostensible polytheism conveyed by the name and the concept were only ways to realize how little we actually know, and how much we wager through mere survival.” — Grayson Haver Currin, Pitchfork, 19 Jan. 2025 Did you know? British philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham once wrote to Indian religious leader Ram Mohan Roy asking him to “send me two letters—one confidential, another ostensible.” By ostensible he meant that, unlike the confidential letter, the latter was intended to be shown to people other than Bentham himself. This sense of ostensible shows clearly the influence of the word’s Latin ancestor, the verb ostendere, meaning “to hold out for inspection,” “to show,” “to make clear by one’s actions,” and “to demonstrate.” Ostensible is still used today as it is in Bentham’s letter, but it is much more likely to suggest a discrepancy between a declared or implied aim or reason (i.e., the aim or reason that someone displays or “shows” to others) and the true one. For example, someone might give “seeing an old friend” as their ostensible reason for planning a trip when in reality they are planning on spending most of their time relaxing on the beach.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 23, 2025 is: slough • \SLUFF\  • verb Slough is a formal verb used for the action of getting rid of something unwanted. It is usually used with off. Slough can also mean "to lose a dead layer of (skin)" or "to become shed or cast off." // The editorial urges the mayor not to slough off responsibility for the errors in the report. // The exfoliating cleanser promises to gently slough away dead skin cells. See the entry > Examples: "Before she left her apartment, she gathered and washed some in a bowl. Then she drew a bath and soaked for a while, eating the figs one by one, swallowing even the hard stems. The steam and water loosened her tense muscles, and her aches started to vanish. She scrubbed herself until the dead skin sloughed off, and underneath, she was new." — Sally Wen Mao, Ninetails: Nine Tales, 2024 Did you know? There are two verbs spelled slough in English, as well as two nouns, and both sets have different pronunciations. The first noun, referring to a swamp or a discouraged state of mind, is pronounced to rhyme with either blue or cow. Its related verb, which can mean "to plod through mud," has the same pronunciation. The second noun, pronounced to rhyme with cuff, refers to the shed skin of a snake (as well as anything else that has been cast off). Its related verb describes the action of shedding or eliminating something, just like a snake sheds its skin. This slough comes from Middle English slughe and is related to slūch, a Middle High German word meaning "snakeskin."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 22, 2025 is: liaison • \lee-AY-zahn\  • noun Liaison refers to a person who helps organizations or groups work together and provide information to each other, or to a relationship that allows such interactions. Liaison can also refer to an illicit sexual relationship. // The new position involves acting as a liaison between the police department and city schools. // The committee has maintained close liaison with some of the former board members. See the entry > Examples: “In 2019, [Jefri] Lindo found work at Bestia, the trendy downtown restaurant. ... He flourished there, working his way up to house expeditor, acting as the key liaison between the kitchen and dining room.” — Laura Tejeda, The Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2025 Did you know? If you took French in school, you might remember that liaison is the word for the phenomenon that causes a silent consonant at the end of one word to sound like it begins the next word when that word begins with a vowel, so that a phrase like beaux arts sounds like \boh zahr\. We can thank French for the origin of the term liaison, as well. It comes from Middle French lier, meaning “to bind or tie.” Other English senses of liaison apply it to all kinds of bonds—from binding and thickening agents used in cooking (as in “a butter and flour liaison”), to people who work to connect different groups, to the kind of secret relationship sometimes entered into by two people who are romantically attracted to one another.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 21, 2025 is: bodacious • \boh-DAY-shuss\  • adjective Bodacious is used as an informal synonym of remarkable and noteworthy, as well as sexy and voluptuous. In some dialects of the Southern and Midland US, bodacious is used by its oldest meaning: "outright, unmistakable." // The bodacious decor of the boutique hotel is intended to appeal to the young and the hip. See the entry > Examples: "There’s no need to lug in a 6-foot specimen tree to add bodacious botanicals into your home, because even the smallest planters can make a big impact when intentionally pairing striking foliage with a unique vessel." — Kristin Guy, Sunset Magazine, 5 Mar. 2024 Did you know? Some of our readers may know bodacious as a word that figured prominently in the lingo of the 1989 film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Others may recall the term's frequent use in the long-running "Snuffy Smith" comic strip. Neither the creators of the comic strip nor the movie can claim to have coined bodacious, which began appearing in print in the mid-1800s, but both surely contributed to its popularity. The exact origin of the word is uncertain, but it is most likely a blend of bold and audacious, and it may be linked to boldacious, a now-rare British dialect term meaning "brazen" or "impudent."